Bi-annual Humanity magazine went above and beyond with its latest interview selection. As it noted in the introduction, Mike Tyson has been interviewed, profiled and written about from every angle, so to do another piece with him via the publication probably would not yield anything interesting. Looking to step outside the box, it asked Odd Future member Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, better known as Earl Sweatshirt — if he would interview Mike Tyson. Both parties agreed to do the interview, and it may be the best thing you read all day, via Complex.
Tyson dishes some blunt advice on being young and dumb to the 20-year-old Sweatshirt:
Mike: I mean, you're pretty much an idiot at 20.
Earl: Right, that's what I feel like. I got to 20, and I —
Mike: You're not an idiot, but you are. You don't really think you're an idiot, but you are.
Earl: Right.
Mike: But you don't think it. Like you're in agreement, but you're an idiot.
He also gets deep in his thoughts, making you wonder: How do you determine age? He also channels his inner Yggrite from Game of Thrones, hypothesizing that we in fact do not actually know anything:
Mike: Let me see. For instance, this is really interesting. It boggles me sometimes, I always wondered the way we determine our age.
Before Julius Caesar, because he made a year 365 days, how could we detect our age? How did we tell? Methuselah was 900, right? So back then it was probably weeks or something. So how did we detect how old we were, determine how old we were before Julius Caesar was born?
Earl: Before there was like a year system?
Mike: Yeah, how's that one, that's pretty tricky now, you think? So we don't know how old we are.
Earl: Everything was based on the sun. The sun. Setting, rising, over the course of the year, over the horizon.
Mike: Many moons, right? But when it comes down to, really deep down, we don't know anything. We don't know anything. Nobody was actually there to tell, this is what actually happened. You know, no one can tell us; this is the real reason why [Abraham] Lincoln freed the slaves. No one can really say anything, they had to be there, you know, to tell us. When you think about, it the world is what? We don't know how old the world is. But the written word is 6,000 years old. Six thousand years is a blink compared to the world, and the activity in the world. Six thousand years is nothing. Nothing.
Read the rest of the interview on the Humanity website, where they discuss Odd Future, The Notebook and Mike Tyson's evolution as a man. It is an interesting read.
